An Alice Tale
by rottenwriter83
Summary: More detail and hopefully some romance... Rated T just to be safe


**Dormie was useless. Having taken too much of an ill-mixed Easement tea many years ago he had the tendency to spend more time at his podium snoozing than as an auctioneer. Still, Hatter couldn't bring himself to fire him. Firstly, it just wasn't smart. Without a ready supply of teas for him to pilfer from there's no telling what secrets he would divulge for even the tiniest drop of Bliss or Whimsy. The Queen wouldn't even need her dreaded doctor duo to go to work on Dormie. No, it was much better to keep an addict like him where he could be watched closely. Secondly, not that Hatter would admit it, Dormie was the closest thing he had to a friend. Nobody really had friends in Wonderland. Trust was hard to come by with almost everyone tea-crazy and everyone else either hiding from the Hearts or starving to death. If you didn't play the game you couldn't hold Suits in your pocket and if you didn't hold cards, so to speak, then they were hunting you down. Hatter knew this all too well. He found himself in the rather miserable position of playing the game with a stolen deck. He was swimming in teas but avoided each drop like his life depended on it - and he had to do so with nonchalance. At least the Tea-heads got to suppress their guilt in their drunken stupors.**

**It's true that Hatter tried to help the resistance when he could. He smuggled food and blankets to The Library and he passed on messages when he was asked but he would hardly call himself a Freedom Fighter. Dodo hated him for his noncommittal-ness but he took his help all the same. Dodo utilized Hatter's many connections. Hatter had connections in the Casino and among the sickening bottom-dwellers who dealt in Lost or Runaway Oyster trafficking and bootleg tea brewing. Hatter never handled bootleg teas or oysters, you had to reach true lowlife status to squeeze those kinds of sins past your conscience. But those kinds of contacts were good for finding other kinds of contraband, rarities such as fresh vegetables and other foods that weren't in tablet form. They could get their grubby hands on wax for candles and even the odd weapon now and again. He just tried not to think what they had to trade for them. He paid dearly for what he wanted, or what somebody else wanted but he knew somebody else - probably an oyster - was paying a lot more. So what did that make him? He liked to think he was better than the bottom-dwellers but most days he wasn't so sure. **

**It was Tea Time for Hatter. The trading floor was bursting with jittery, impatient clients all clamoring for a new fix. Hatter was happy to let Dormie handle the craziness while he escaped into a cup of hot Oyster tea. This kind of tea was part of the contraband Hatter bargained for from his Casino connections. Ironically "Oyster Tea" was a kind of tea provided by the oysters rather then derived FROM them. Strictly speaking The White Rabbit was only supposed to bring oysters through the Looking Glass into Wonderland. The Queen was only interested in the little pearls inside each oyster, she had absolutely no use for anything else in the oysters' world. That didn't stop The White Rabbit from making a little extra on the side from the exotic things they brought through on their raids. Mostly they make due with what they find on the oysters themselves; jewelry, hair ribbons, hats and sunglasses. And since the Casino drained oysters through their bare feet there was always an ample supply of shoes and boots and sandals and even pink fuzzy slippers. Wonderlanders have no use to most of the oysters' so-called electronic devices since their power sources are completely different but Hatter knew of one guy who pounded them with a hammer and used the shards of metal to make mosaics in some of the Clubs' and Diamonds' houses. Hatter once heard Agent White say in a cheeky tone, "No part of the oyster is wasted, except their brain and that's really not good for anything anyway." **

**Hatter didn't know anything about an oyster's brain. He couldn't say much about oysters at all. Wonderlanders made fun of oyster and called them stupid and treated them like they treated lampshades and used them like toothpicks. But Hatter had to wonder. Oysters were drugged even before they're dragged through the Looking Glass and then they're kept drugged indefinitely. He'd never met a conscious, sober oyster - he wondered what they were really like. Were they really so bad?**


End file.
